Topography
by rhyme time
Summary: She wants to be what he needs. Post-ep for 8x01 Dead Doll .


Title: Topography  
Author: rhyme time  
Disclaimer: Not mine, only borrowing.  
Rating: T  
Summary: She wants to be what he needs. Post-ep for 8x01 (Dead Doll).

_Where are we?__  
__What the hell is going on?__  
__The dust has only just begun to form…_

_Hide and Seek, Imogen Heap_

Work is taxing and her body screams in protest against the long hours. Even though her injuries have technically healed and she's been cleared for light duty, any and all physical exertion is alarmingly draining. The incident has left its indelible mark.

In her mind, she references everything surrounding her abduction in as few words as possible: ordeal, unfortunate incident, last May. To reduce it, if only by the amount of words she uses to describe it, lessens its impact on her life.

Grissom is at work and she takes Hank out for a walk. The park is well lit but Grissom disapproves of her taking Hank for walks alone at night. When she asked him what's the worst that could happen, he frowned and raised his eyebrows indicating she should know exactly what dangers lurk in the dark. When she told him that she believed her quota on near death experiences had been fulfilled, he didn't speak to her for the rest of the night.

He also disapproves of her making light of the Natalie brouhaha.

Hank pulls on his leash and Sara watches the way the lamplight illuminates his thick neck straining against his collar. He doesn't want to get away, exactly; he just wants some breathing room.

She wonders when she and Hank began living parallel lives.

On the mornings Grissom comes home from work and she is not sleeping, he suggests they take a walk together.

'The fresh air will be good for us,' he reasons.

She doesn't know what this means.

The air in their apartment is fine. They have three air purifiers strategically placed around the apartment to remove a plethora of allergens, including Hank's dander.

Nevertheless, Grissom waits by the front door, smiling, positively beaming, his sunny disposition making her tired.

He doesn't use a leash but he holds her hand and they pound out laps around the track at the park. The entire time they're on the track he smiles and comments how good this is for them and how they should get out more. A week ago he asked her if she'd ever thought about joining a gym and she asked him if he thought she was fat. He frowned and kept silent for the fifth and sixth lap around the track. By the seventh lap, he was commenting about the weather which inevitably led to him telling her how great it felt to be outside and they really should get out more.

She doesn't know how to tell him that she just wants to be with him. The fresh air in the park doesn't do her good and he never hovered before the abduction. There is a part of her that craves sameness more than she's ever wanted anything in her life, except, of course, Grissom. There is nothing and no one she has ever wanted more than Grissom. He is the pinnacle, the peak, the realization of her desire. In one fell swoop he fulfilled her want quota.

It's just that she hates that the whirlwind of last May picked them up from the comfort of their happy life and set them down in different places.

On the evening of the incident with Natalie, they had a quiet pre-work meal together, shared the shower which inevitably led to shower sex, and then left for work as if it was any other night. In truth, it was any other night from the last two years. At work they had gone their separate ways and then Sara had been called to the scene involving another miniature but with a twist. Grissom used an endearment at the scene and she remembers feeling nervous, wondering if anyone had overheard him. They'd been discussing their options in terms of coming out to the team but hadn't nailed down any firm plans. Grissom assured her that he would move to the swing shift but she didn't want to create resentment among the left behind team members. Without a backward glance, Grissom walked away and she processed the scene. There was no 'I love you' or 'Be careful' -- there was only the expectation of seeing each other at the end of a long night, of going home together. Neither of them knew that such an insignificant moment would be the last normal, physical moment they would share, the last time they would feel at peace with each other and themselves.

His happiness is defined by After: he's happy that she's home, not dead, not outwardly, irrevocably wounded. Her happiness is defined by Before: when she said she wasn't hungry and he believed her, when she could wince at a stitch in her side and he didn't reach for a bottle of pain pills (when wincing at a stitch in her side didn't require a bottle of pain pills), when being together was enough.

Nearly a year ago he turned over and told her that she was the light in his life. He said he'd been living his life in the dark, and she was light, living breathing light in his life and how many people could say they ever found that?

How can she put out that light? How can she look him in the eye and tell him the truth and stop being what he needs? And, if she brings darkness back into his life, will he stop loving her? These are the questions she ponders while she is walking Hank at night and why she has to be alone in the dark.

Hank is reticent to reenter the house. He knows that playtime is over and quiet is on the horizon, but he is a good, obedient dog. She drops his leash by the front door and the metal clip hits the hardwood with a thud. Hank runs ahead and sits at the threshold of the bathroom. He knows his mistress well.

Sara strips down and stares at herself in the bathroom mirror. The gash on her cheek left behind a jagged, pink line. The surgery to repair her broken arm left behind a large, still healing purple gouge on her forearm. The break was through the skin and to repair it they had to cut her wider, deeper.

The spray of water across her back washes away another case, the scent of another death. The cast is off but her arm still aches, and the ribs have knitted together, but she feels the ache in them, too, the weakness.

Weak is a good description of how she feels in the aftermath of her ordeal. Her body isn't quite up to par and neither is her mind. Her stamina, in general, is less than it was before.

She's never been the kind of woman to cry at commercials or greeting cards, but lately she's been tearing up when she sees her friends truly happy or when Grissom is asleep on his side, snoring just enough to let her know he's okay, he's all right in there. Sometimes she feels the urge to cry when he's sitting in his father's chair reading the paper or when he's wearing his off work attire – a plain t-shirt and jeans. When he looks at her and for that split second there is no pity, no what if, no thank God you're alive and not dead look in his eyes, when he looks at her and smiles simply because he loves her, she wants to weep. Sometimes she hurries to the bathroom and takes several deep breaths because she doesn't want to be this crying, weepy woman that can't deal with it, can't get over it already.

Wrapped in a towel she lays face down on the bed, burying her face in his pillow. His scent is no longer entirely distinguishable – it smells like him, and her, and them, and their home. They've combined to form an entirely new scent and it is familiar and wonderful and comforting in its way.

After the incident there was a steady stream of casseroles and platters of food that found their way into Sara and Grissom's freezer. It was the first time anyone had been to their place. She wonders what people thought, if they thought anything at all. She wonders if for that brief moment when visitors crossed the threshold of their home, they thought, 'It smells like Grissom and Sara,' the parts indistinguishable from the whole. She wonders if that's how people think of them now -- Grissom and Sara as an entity, instead of as separate human beings.

It is in these moments, when she realizes she's made a life with him, that she wants him home – she can forget the awkwardness, all that has happened in the aftermath of Natalie, and she can pretend that they have not been torn asunder by the ordeal, her unfortunate experience, the goings-on of last May.

It is in these moments that she would gladly walk with him around the track at the park or join a gym or let him simply take care of her, but in these moments, he is unfortunately never home.

She eats, sleeps, and suffers alone. She is alone. Again.

* * *

For a moment she is disoriented and then she realizes she must've fallen asleep. She feels his hand on the back of her calf.

She raises her head a fraction of an inch off the pillow and glances at him over her shoulder. The towel is barely covering her ass, but he doesn't seem to notice her state of undress.

His hand continues its northward journey but stops on the back of her thigh. His finger traces a pattern.

"I've never noticed this scar," he says softly.

She doesn't have to look at the scar to know which one he's talking about.

"What happened?" he asks.

"I don't remember," she lies easily.

He looks at her. He knows she is lying. "It's an unusual scar," he presses.

She feels his finger trace the faint, rounded square, the line in the middle.

_He'd been slapping her around for years, her father. He called her flamingo and four eyes and clumsy. When she broke his favorite ashtray, he made her go and get the belt. She pulled down her pants and he raised his arm and she thought it would never stop. Never. Numbers were distance, numbers made sense. On number thirty-five, she felt something break, heard something snap. She remembers looking back and seeing the belt whole, but her skin was broken. It was enough to stay her father's hand. She quickly learned that pain was a means to an end. Often, she wondered what that said about her, how that thought guided her life, shaped her fragile, little girl psyche. _

"I don't remember how I got it," she tells him.

With his hand still resting over the scar, he regards her for a moment. "Why won't you talk to me?" he asks.

She thinks about the two years they've had together. They've been mostly happy. There have been periods of adjustment and he's pulled a couple of stunts she'd rather not relive, but mostly, they've been happy. Being together, living together, sharing a life has been remarkably easy.

Theirs isn't a love filled with pranks and tickle fights and wild sex in the supply closet at work. They're best friends, his idea of a joke is putting bugs (real ones) instead of raisins in her oatmeal, and her idea of a joke is watching his face as she eats them. They share meals and thoughts about politics and watch old black and whites and have sex three days a week whenever it fits into their hectic schedule. In the six months before the abduction, they'd been talking about the future. Grissom had been hinting about marriage and retirement and Sara had maintained an entirely neutral demeanor, unsure of how to feel about finally having everything she ever wanted.

He waits for her answer but she doesn't want to be this person, this woman with baggage and scars and secrets. She wants to be light and resilient and unchanged. She wants to get up in the morning and for her arm, side, and leg not to hurt so much. She wants to be able to work a normal shift, or God forbid, pull a double.

She wants for Grissom to hold onto her because he wants to, not because he's afraid someone will take her from him.

"Sara?" he says, rousing her from her memories.

Sitting up, she faces him. The towel slips but she pulls it closed. She wants so badly to tell him the truth, to share with him that she knows her near death experience is getting the best of her, and on top of that is her father and all his sins and her mother and all her sins, too. He's waiting and he wants to hear her but she can't say the words, she can't tell him that she needs help, that she escaped the car but she is drowning just the same. Her mouth is full of sand and death, and the words she needs so desperately to say to him are too thick and heavy to push through the barrier the desert left behind.

His eyes are worried, his jaw clenched in anticipation. She just wants to be what he needs. She fits her hand into his. "Let's go for a walk," she says, "it will be good for us."

/END/


End file.
